The World in 2030

76 The World in 2030
The book is actually a plan for how to build a machine.
I’d like to be able to hire a team of programmers to create
the Emotion Machine architecture that’s described
in the book—a machine that can switch between all the
different kinds of thinking I discuss. Nobody’s ever
built a system that either has or acquires knowledge
about thinking itself, so that it can get better at problem
solving over time. If I could get five good programmers,
I think I could build it in three to five years.
We humans are not the end of evolution, so if we can
make a machine that’s as smart as a person, we can
probably also make one that’s much smarter. There’s
no point in making just another person. You want to
make one that can do things we can’t. 143
But because 1980s AI research was mistakenly considered to
be a failure, current research into developing computers with
human-like intelligence and characteristics and intelligence
is no longer called artificial intelligence. The field of study is
now called ‘super-intelligence’ or ‘strong AI’.
Dr. Nick Bostrom again:
Given that superintelligence will one day be technologically
feasible, will people choose to develop it? This
question can pretty confidently be answered in the affirmative.
Associated with every step along the road to
superintelligence are enormous economic payoffs.
The computer industry invests huge sums in the
next generation of hardware and software, and it will